Penguins Purge Coach, Competence

Confidence is fragile, impulsive, and unreliable. Confidence cannot be purchased. Confidence cannot be requested. Confidence is simply inherent.

On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Penguins fired Coach Michel Therrien. Assistant Coach Dan Bylsma supplanted him. “I didn't part like the way, the direction the team was headed,” said General Manager Ray Shero. “I've watched for a number of weeks and, at the end of the day, the direction is not that I wanted to have here. I wasn't comfortable, and that's why the change was made.”

According to Bylsma, aggression would be improvement. “With the strengths we have, we should be able to go into buildings and make teams deal with the quality of players we have at every position,” he said. “I look at a group that can win games right now, and we need to do that. We can do this, but the players have to believe we can do this. We need to put the brakes on -- we're in a hole, but we need to stop digging and get focused on what we need to do to play good hockey. We need to be an aggressive group, and get focused on playing back to our strengths, and focus away from this situation the last while here.”

During his career, Therrien logged a 212-132-22-46 ledger. In Montreal (190 games), he accrued a 77-77-22-14 record. In Pittsburgh (272 games), he amassed a 135-105-32 record. “You hear that in pro sports, that the team may have tuned the coach out, or the coach may have lost the team, but I'm not sure if you can pinpoint that,” said Shero. “As the general manager of the team, I'm very close from watching, it's just a feeling -- the timing is right.”

On July 19, the Penguins retained Therrien. Pittsburgh’s confidence renunciation is ridiculous.